Return Value

If characters such as blanks and punctuation are passed in an HTTP stream, they might be misinterpreted at the receiving end. URL encoding replaces characters that are not allowed in a URL with character-entity equivalents consisting of hexadecimal escape sequences. The converted string is expected to conform to the UTF-8 format.

URL encoding replaces all character codes except for letters, numbers, and the following punctuation characters:

- (minus sign)

_ (underscore)

. (period)

! (exclamation point)

* (asterisk)

'(single quotation mark)

( and ) (opening and closing parentheses)

For example, when embedded in a block of text to be transmitted in a URL, the characters < and > are encoded as %3c and %3e.